


my memories of children's things (before the yearning song of flesh on flesh)

by okayantigone



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Herbal Sleeping Aids, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Nightmares, Poppy Milk as a peace offering, Pre-Canon, Psychological Trauma, Stuffed Toys, Unreliable Narrator, nicaise is like 11, the regent should be his own warning, this is not a nice story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 04:37:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15162827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone
Summary: he falls asleep imagining the sound of a latch locking him in a room where no one touches his skin anymore, and he dreams of the fields of marlas, the way he imagines them to be. in the dream, all the soldiers are sheep, and laurent drives a sword through the regent, and silences nicaise when he cries.





	my memories of children's things (before the yearning song of flesh on flesh)

**Author's Note:**

> you read the tags, you clicked on this anyway, idk what to tell you.   
> nicaise's perception of events is uh - weird. his perception of the regent is skewed on account of he's a child and the regent is a brutal manipulator who twists things a whole lot.   
> beyond that - nicaise and laurent bond over their shared victimhood.

in the morning, the sky is blue like the bruises that litter his milky pale thighs, each small galaxy of burst blood vessels like nebulae shaped after the man’s mouth.   
the regent can only sleep after a goblet or two of wine, and his breath is soaked with the smell and taste of valerian. nicaise feels like the crushed petals, tainted red, crumpled at the bottom of a chalice, weak and insignificant.

 

it takes twenty minutes for his breathing to even out. he likes to fall asleep with nicaise beside him, says nicaise’s warmth makes him feel safe, and nicaise wants to laugh, but he can’t, won’t, because when the regent is happy, nicaise gets to eat and wear soft clothes that don’t aggravate his skin, and bathe twice a day. when the regent is happy, nicaise is the favorite, and he knows that he will not survive in this court if he isn’t, because he’s just a child, and there are people here who will pull out his fingernails to find out his lover’s secrets, and the regent will kill him to prevent that, and so.

 

he wanders the halls instead, draped in one of the regent’s sleep shirts, too big on him, slipping off his bruised shoulder (the regent dislocated it, and it was an accident, and he was genuinely sorry. he set it again swiftly, and kissed the swollen flesh and apologized kindly, and they didn’t do anything else the rest of the night. he read letters, with nicaise curled in his lap like a cat. everything hurts, these days, shoulders, back, knees, jaw - )

 

his nightmares are vague and steeped in darkness. he doesn’t always remember them, except sometimes. the plague had come and gone swift as mercy, but they were starving long before the sickness. it’s why he was so small. it’s why the regent liked him. he earned his first real meal in his life on his knees.

 

ancel says it’s what they must do to survive. nicaise doesn’t like that, but he agrees. ancel tried to be kind to him. showed him how to smear the golden paint to bring out his eyes, and how to press berry juice on his lips to make them fuller, sweeter to kiss.

 

but he still can’t sleep, the bed is too soft- softer than he is used to, and the regent’s deep even breathing calls to something in nicaise’s birdcage of a chest, a thought of taking one of those lovely down-stuffed pillows, and laying it over the older man’s handsome face, and pressing down just to quiet the noise and so –

 

he wanders the halls, sleep-soft still, sore in hidden places, his curls messed up from the tugging, and his wrists bruised after the shape of his master’s beautiful nimble hands.

 

he runs into laurent like this. his tears still cling to his lashes shamefully. he remembers what he dreamed in snatches- mama’s bony arms wrapped around him, but when he woke up with a gasp, all he could feel was a possessive arm thrown loosely over his waist, and he couldn’t bear the warmth of the room.

 

the prince looked bright and awake, entirely unbelonging in the grey dewy light of the early hours, his hair pulled in a tight braid down the back of his laced jacket. it’s impossible to tell wether he’s just woken up, or is just about to go to sleep. the court at vere wakes late anyhow, and even for an early riser like the regent, there’s a few hours still, before nicaise has to return to his side and wake him with his mouth as has become custom.

 

laurent looks surprised to see him, blue eyes widening briefly, and then schools his features. he is not… entirely unguarded. (they have the same eyes. laurent, and nicaise that is. very, very blue eyes)

 

nicaise has not had much cause to speak to the prince. they’ve brushed one another briefly passing each other by at the regent’s side, and nicaise has been sent to fetch laurent from the library a few times, but he doesn’t truly know or care for the man, because he knows what he is. a glorified replacement for a gold-cast doll. the regent would never say it – he’s sweet like that, but nicaise is not stupid, and he knows.

 

“did my uncle send you?” laurent asks cautiously, casting a look outside the arched windows that line the hallway. “it’s very early.” he adds. that statement hides the question of _is there an emergency?_ there isn’t.

 

“i couldn’t sleep,” nicaise says instead. he’s been crying, but his voice does not break.

 

“ah,” says laurent, and shifts his shoulders uncomfortably. it does not come easy to him, talking with another, nicaise notes. oh, he can give orders, and flay a man alive with words – he’s seen it happen often enough, but with him, always, the prince seems hesitant to call on his princely demeanor, the voice nicaise has taken to calling in his head his Prince Voice.

 

“i have poppy milk in my rooms,” he says finally, after a while. “if you’d like some.”

 

why the prince of vere would need poppy milk to sleep, nicaise can’t begin to fathom. maybe he too, like his uncle, is an insomniac. it would explain why he is awake so early, wandering the halls.

 

nicaise wonders if he has nightmares too, but banishes the thought. what reason could this platinum-and-honey prince have for bad dreams? his world is made up of the scales of nicaise’s dreams before the famine and the plague. he lifts his injured shoulder in a shrug. “alright.”

 

he imagines the prince might bring him to his knees in exchange for the milk, and it might make the regent angry. then again, what his master doesn’t know won’t hurt him. and the thought of laurent – well. it’s not distasteful. he’s younger than the regent, slender and pale, and they have the same eyes and the same hands. even the curve of their lips is similar. he wonders if it was the regent who taught laurent how to smile without his teeth, and still make it into a promise.

 

the prince’s quarters  - the other pets will be jealous, if they knew he’s been in the bed of not one, but two royals. if they knew. somehow this feels different. private.   
  
laurent crouches next to his bedside cabinet and fishes out the vial of poppy milk. he hands it to nicaise.   
  
“put three drops in a goblet of water or milk before you sleep,” he instructs. “any more than that and you may become addicted.”

 

he gestures to the table. there’s a pitcher of water, and crystal goblets, arranged like glittering soldiers. laurent pays him no heed as he walks to the chaise and drops on it gracefully, starting on the laces of his boots that climb up to his velvet-clothed thighs.

 

nicaise looks between laurent and the delicately carved vial in his hand, and realizes laurent had given instruction not just for the night but –

 

“you’re giving this to me?” nicaise blurted.

 

laurent looks up, and looks surprised again. “yes?” he makes it a question, as though unsure.

 

“you wouldn’t want me to… attend you?” he asks cautiously. he doesn’t want to come across as too forward and be punished for it. the regent has backhanded him a few times, when he was in a mood, and nicaise spoke out of turn, but he knows laurent has a taste for cruelty his uncle doesn’t – that is what the other pets say, and he hasn’t seen or heard anything to disprove them. why else would he take no pet or lover, except if he was a true sadist, and refusing to show his preferences to the court before his position is cemented?

 

even in their society – open and free of judgment, nicaise’s position at the regent’s side is not advertised freely. it confuses him – the regent is sweet to him, and lavishes him with gifts and small kindnesses, but it is maybe one of those things he won’t truly grasp until he’s older – for now it’s merely a fact of his existence, like the knowledge that his mouth is made of gold in that it pays for all his needs.

 

laurent frowns, his light brows drawing together, and marring his smooth forehead with wrinkles. “no.” he says finally, flat.

 

nicaise contemplates this.

 

“i can’t pay you back for this.”

 

the bottle alone could have bought him enough food to save his mother. before the plague.

 

“i don’t want you to,” laurent says simply. he doesn’t sound frustrated. he sounds as though he will repeat it however many times nicaise needs to hear it.

 

nicaise nods then. if the prince is going to be cryptically generous, he won’t argue it. now that he has a soft warm bed that he is beginning to grow used to, it might be nice to be able to sleep through the night in it as well.

 

“thank you,” he says earnestly. if the prince won’t ask for payment, the least nicaise can do is gift him honestly. “may i go now?”

 

he is conscious that he has not been dismissed. laurent waves an elegant hand.   
  
“to my uncle?” he arches an eyebrow, and the question is posed with deliberate neutrality.   
  
“the slaves’ baths,” nicaise says. honesty is an outpour from him tonight. the prince needn’t have known this. “no one comes this time of night. i don’t like doing it in front of – “

 

“use my bath,” laurent says. “you won’t have to walk as far. you can be there when he wakes.” his voice is heavy with the knowing.

 

using the prince’s bath means he’ll have more time to luxuriate in the warm water. or have more time to sleep. both are sweet options to him. laurent has finished taking his boots off and works on the laces of his jacket with surprising accuracy. accustomed to undressing himself without help, then, nicaise nods, and files the knowledge for later.

 

the prince shrugs the heavy brocade jacket off. he’s wearing a shirt of beautiful white silk under it, pearlescent in the light of dawn. he leads nicaise into his bath. maybe this is it. maybe the prince is too sweet to order him outright, so he will use this as an excuse. or maybe he enjoys the game of pretending as though nicaise has a choice. it’s so frustrating that he cannot tell. he can almost always tell with the regent.

 

but the prince surprises again. he simply – leaves. walks out of the room, and even closes the door.

 

nicaise realizes he must be robbing the prince of his night bath, but he wants ot be clean so badly. the warm water soothes his tired muscles, and the oils smell sweetly of flowers, which he enjoys. he enjoys being clean and smelling nice. it makes everything else almost feel worth it.

 

he emerges dripping water on the floor, and wraps himself in the soft material of the towels. he doesn’t particularly want to throw the regent’s sleep shirt on again, but he is keenly aware that he may have overstayed his welcome in the prince’s rooms.

 

laurent is sprawled on the chaise, reading in a language nicaise doesn’t recognize. he can’t read or write in veretian, but he knows the letters by sight. paschal is kind. he teaches him some words. nicaise can write his own name, and the regent’s name, and the name of their country. he hopes if paschal continues the lessons, he may be able to read more soon, and write better, the way the regent does, in beautiful sprawling lines of ink across paper.

 

laurent looks up at him. for a moment, as their eyes- same blue, same blue, forget-me-not, sapphire-and-moonlight- meet across the room, there is nicaise, shrouded in water, baptized in the bruising of flesh, and there is laurent, crowned with his golden hair, healed so well that only his heart gapes like an open wound.

 

“would you like to sleep here tonight?” laurent asks, and then looks shocked. his eyes widening, his sharp features crumpling into something unfamiliar, because – nicaise realizes – he had not meant to say it. “i won’t – i won’t touch you, i don’t mean the –“ he falters again. words – those things he can make dance and bend to his will like ancel with his fires – fail him. he is trying to say something, nicaise knows, without saying anything, and he is failing.

 

“i would like that,” nicaise says, because kindness is a precious commodity, and he will take it where he can get it – at the regent’s feet, at the top of ancel’s paintbrush, and at the hands of a sunlit future king. “but you have to wake me before he – “

 

“yes.” laurent says, and his eyes darken to a sky of storms and lightning, and then they are light again, like the spring sky, washed out, hung to dry. nicaise curls beterrn the prince’s silk sheets naked and unashamed, wraps himself in the heavy comforter. the bed becomes a nest, and he is a bird with clipped wings, but he can still sing.

 

the prince hovers in the doorway, uncertain. it’s odd to see him like this. nicaise wonders if anyone else ever has. finally whatever is on his mind seems to settle and he crosses the room in a few long graceful strides. nicaise lets his eyes flutter closed, because if it happens he doesn’t want to see it. if it happens, he can pretend it is his master, the one he knows he loves, the only one he loves now that he has no mother anymore. instead those hands – the same hands, really, only laurent’s are less callused, slide over his curls carefully. it’s a gentle stilted movement. as though he is unused to bestowing affection, which is alright – nicaise is unaccustomed to receiving it. the mattress dips when laurent rests his weight on the very edge of it.

 

“i have nightmares too,” he says, and nicaise wants to lash out, say he doesn’t have nightmares at all, because they don’t count if he can’t remember – but he doesn’t. “i dream of marlas. i dream of that akielon barbarian driving his sword into my brother. every night.” his hair never stops petting nicaise’s hair. “when it happened – not in my dreams, but back then. when it really happened – i started screaming. my uncle, he – he put his hands on my mouth. to silence me. one hand on my mouth, one over my chest, because i was thrashing. he held me down until i stilled, and then i was just crying. no one remembers that i was howling, because he made me stop.”

 

nicaise is unsure of there is a point to the story. he is well familiar with the regent’s kindness. his valerian-scented breath when he kissed away nicaise’s tears the first time, because he couldn’t help crying when it hurt so bad –

 

“he said,” laurent continues, and his voice is very, very soft, like the silken bedsheets, “that we were all alone now – no other family left. just me and him. he said he understood, because he felt the same way when my father left him. he said – he said – what a horrible thing it is, to be left with the burden of ruling by an illustrious older brother,” the hand stills. laurent breathes, deep and heavy, nicaise hears the air rattle in his chest, which is empty, because his heart is gone when the regent pushed his thighs apart, and they spread wide, and his heart escaped, and buried itself in the stones of auguste’s crypt.

 

“i wanted to give you this,” laurent says finally. his hand disappears between the many blankets and pillows and emerges holding something – a toy, nicaise realizes dimly, and he can’t help the gasp of childish wonder that escapes him. he has never had a toy.

it’s a sheep, delicately crafted, and impossibly soft, and laurent places it in nicaise’s waiting hands.

 

“when i was a child,” he begins again in that heavy voice. “it used to help me sleep. he didn’t mind that i had it with me in bed. i don’t think he cared. keep it, and the poppy milk. i hope you can sleep better.”

 

nicaise runs his hands over the soft material, still, and cannot quite comprehend – his first toy. his very first toy, and it is a gift from the crown prince, and he spends his days at the arm of the regent. if only his mother could see him now.

 

he plants a delicate kiss to the sheep’s nose, and tucks it under his arm. he closes his eyes. the mattress shifts when laurent stands up.   
  
“i’ll wake you when it’s time,” he promises, and then nicaise hears the door shut firmly behind him. he wonders if he can pad across the room and flip the latch and lock it. he imagines laurent wouldn’t punish him for it, and it’s a titillating thought.

 

he falls asleep imagining the sound of a latch, and he dreams of the fields of marlas, the way he imagines them to be. in the dream, all the soldiers are sheep, and laurent drives a sword through the regent, and silences nicaise when he cries.   
  


 


End file.
